South Korea and America

Patching up

In search of a common strategy

IT IS not just in Europe, nor indeed just over Iraq, that the United States has trouble with its friends. South Korea's new foreign minister, Yoon Young-kwan, was in Washington this week hoping to hammer out a common strategy for dealing with North Korea's suspected nuclear ambitions. South Korea has been keen for America to start talking directly to prickly North Korea. But the Bush administration says it will do so only as part of a broader multilateral exchange including others in the region affected by North Korea's provocative behaviour. With the North feared to be preparing to restart a plutonium-reprocessing plant, and possibly to test-fire one of its long-range missiles, Mr Yoon's task is urgent. All the more so as South Korea's new president, Roh Moo-hyun, is soon to travel to Washington for his first meeting with George Bush.

Since America caught it cheating last October on a 1994 agreement to freeze its plutonium production, by secretly setting up an illicit uranium-enrichment programme, North Korea has pulled out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and restarted its plutonium-producing reactor. Accusing America of preparing a pre-emptive strike on its nuclear facilities, this week it cancelled economic talks with South Korea. Citing the threat from an American-South Korean military exercise (to which North Korea had been invited to send observers, but refused), it also pulled out of military liaison talks at the demilitarised zone on its border with South Korea.

North Korea says all this is designed to force America to negotiate a non-aggression treaty. But it is also clearly intended to widen the rift that has emerged between America and the new government in Seoul. Both insist that North Korea must give up its nuclear ambitions. Both say they want a peaceful solution to the crisis. But, though Mr Roh has so far ruled out any resort to military force, or even sanctions, to resolve the issue, Mr Bush has not.

It did not help that Mr Roh, a past critic of America's military presence in South Korea, kicked off his presidency by implying that he could somehow mediate between America and North Korea. But his government has since changed its tune. Disappointed by North Korea's belligerent response to offers of better relations in future, and concerned at the effect the crisis is having on South Korea's economy, Mr Yoon now endorses a multilateral approach, albeit one that would involve direct talks between America and North Korea too. Both Japan and China have been pressing the North to accept such a plan.

One idea, a version of which Mr Yoon may have brought to Washington, would be for America to agree to bilateral talks with North Korea under some multilateral umbrella, while South Korea would not just offer North Korea inducements to agree to this formula (the North is adept at pocketing these and giving nothing in return) but would also agree to suspend all economic assistance if the North refused. The aim would be to give both America and North Korea an incentive to talk, while reassuring America that South Korea was ready to work alongside its chief ally, not just carp from the sidelines.

Mr Roh has taken other steps too to bolster the alliance. Hints from American officials that some forces in South Korea could be withdrawn if the government wished had caused alarm, and have prompted strong government expressions of support for the servicemen. Like Japan, which also sees the need to back up its chief ally at a time of growing regional tension, the South Korean cabinet has agreed in principle to send non-combat troops and other assistance to Iraq after the war.

For their part, American officials insist that North Korea will be handled differently from Iraq. But on this point South Korea needs some reassurance. For, though some of America's diplomats see multilateral diplomacy as a way to more productive bilateral talks with North Korea, others see it as a way of gathering support to pile on the pressure. The worse the North behaves, the more likely it is that the hardliners will win the day.